An overnight blast in southeastern Turkey interrupted oil flow from Iraq, a Turkish energy ministry official said Monday.

The blast hit the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline in Mardin province close to Turkey's border with Syria and repairs are expected to take up to 10 days, the official added on customary condition of anonymity.

Turkey's interior minister said Sunday some 115 Kurdish rebels have been killed in a large-scale military offensive launched in the southeast of the country in July.

"We reached the conclusion that 115 members of the separatist terrorist organization have been rendered ineffective" since an offensive launched on July 23 to 24, Idris Naim Sahin was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency, referring to members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

General Mohammed Ahmed Faris, a military aviator who became the first Syrian in space, fled to Turkey on Sunday after defecting from President Bashar Assad's regime, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Before crossing into Turkey, Faris visited the headquarters of the Free Syrian Army in his home town Aleppo in a show of solidarity with rebel forces battling Assad's troops in Syria's biggest city, it said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will travel to Turkey next Saturday for talks on the conflict in Syria, a State Department spokeswoman said.

"Clinton goes to Istanbul for bilateral consultations with the Turkish government on Syria as well as to cover other timely issues," the spokeswoman told reporters in the Malawian capital Lilongwe.

Kurdish rebels stormed a Turkish army post on the Iraq border Sunday, triggering fighting that killed 22 people in the latest clash since Ankara launched a major offensive against the outlawed PKK.

Six soldiers, two village guards and 14 Kurdish rebels were killed following the assault on an army post in a village in the southeastern province of Hakkari, the local governor told the Anatolia news agency.

Iran has reached out to Turkey and Qatar to ask for their help in freeing 48 Iranian pilgrims being held in Syria after kidnappers stormed their bus in Damascus, state media reported on Sunday.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi telephoned his Turkish and Qatari counterparts, Ahmet Davutoglu and Hamad bin Jasim bin Jabir Al-Thani, late Saturday to request their assistance, the state television website reported.

Police said Saturday they had rounded up about 2,000 people in an operation to evict undocumented immigrants from central Athens, claiming that "national survival" was at stake for debt-choked Greece.

The aim of the operation was "to send them back to their countries of origin, close the borders and ensure that Athens returns to being a lawful city with a quality of life," police spokesman Christos Manouras said.

Turkey's top military council on Saturday ordered the retirement of dozens of generals and admirals who are currently being held on charges of coup plotting, the army announced on its website.

Fifty-five generals and admirals are required to retire due to a lack of vacancies in their positions and one admiral due to his age as of September 1, the army said in an online statement.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati discussed with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu the latest developments regarding the 11 kidnapped Lebanese pilgrims in Syria.

Miqati contacted Davutoglo after media reports said that several of the 11 men have escaped after the area where they were held came under severe shelling.

Defected Syrian general Manaf Tlass held talks with Turkish foreign ministry officials during a surprise visit to Ankara, a Turkish diplomat told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

Tlass, whose defection last month was hailed in the West as a major blow for Syrian President Bashar Assad, visited Ankara "at his own request" and held talks at the foreign ministry on Friday, the diplomat said.